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[ Printed and distributed February 14, 1917.] 



DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT DELIVERED TO 

THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

JANUARY 22, 1917. 



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WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : l»I7 






D. of D. 
FEB 24 1917 



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ADDRESS. 



To THE Senate of the United States, 22 January, 

1917. 

Gentlemen of the Senate: On the eighteenth of 
December last I addressed an identic note to the govern- 
ments of the nations now at war requesting them to 
state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by 
either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they 
would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf 
of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like 
our own, many of whose most vital interests the war 
puts in constant jeopardy. The Central Powers united 
in a reply which stated merely that they were ready to 
meet their antoganists in conference to discuss terms of 
peace. The Entente Powers have repHed much more 
definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but 
with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrange- 
ments, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they 
deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory 
settlement. We are that much nearer a definite discus- 
sion of the peace which shall end the present war. We 
are that much nearer the discussion of the international 
concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace. 
In every discussion of the peace that must end this war 
it is taken for granted that that peace must be followed 
by some definite concert of power which will make it 
virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should 
ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, 
every sane and thoughtful man must take that for 
granted. 

I have sought this opportunity to address you because 
I thought that I owed it to you, as the council associated 
with me in the final determination of om- international 
obhgations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought 
and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in 
regard to the duty of our Government in the days to 
come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a 
new plan the foundations of peace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States 
should play no part in that great enterprise. To take 
part in such a service will be the opportunity for which 
they have sought to prepare themselves by the very 
principles and purposes of their polity and the approved 
practices of their Government ever since the days when 
they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope 
that it might in all that it was and did show mankind 
the way to liberty. They can not in honour withhold 
the service to which they are now about to be challenged. 
They do not wish to withliold it. But they owe it to 
themselves and to the other nations of the world to state 
the conditions imder which they will feel free to render it. 

70478—17 (3) 



That service is nothing less than this, to add their 
authority and their power to the authority and force 
of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout 
the world. Such a settlement can not now be long post- 
poned. It is right that before it comes this Government 
should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it 
would feel justified in asking oiu- people to approve its 
formal and solemn adherence to a League for Peace. 
I am here to attempt to state those conditions. 

The present war must first be ended ; but we owe it to 
candour and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind 
to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of 
future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of differ- 
ence ill what way and upon what terms it is ended. The 
treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must 
embody terms which will create a peace that is worth 
guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the 
approval of mankind, not merely a peace that will serve 
the several interests and immediate aims of the nations 
engaged. We shall have no voice in determining what 
those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice 
in determming whether they shall be made lasting or not 
by the guarantees of a universal covenant; and our 
judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a 
condition precedent to permanency should be spoken 
now, not afterwards when it may be too late. 

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include 
the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the 
future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of 
peace that the peoples of America could jom in guaran- 
teemg. The elements of that peace must be elements 
that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of 
the American governments, elements consistent with 
their political faith and with the practical convictions 
which the peoples of America have once for all embraced 
and undertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American government 
would throw any obstacle in the way of unj terms of 
peace the Governments now at war might agree upon, or 
seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be. 
I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace be- 
tween the belligerents will not satisfy even the belliger- 
ents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace 
secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be 
created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settle- 
ment so much greater than the force of any nation now 
engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that 
no nation, no probable combination of nations could face 
or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to 
endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized 
major force of mankind. 

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will 
determine whether it is a peace for which such a guar- 
antee can be secured. The question upon which the 
whole future peace and policy of the world depends is 
this; Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure 
peace, or only for a new balance of power ? If it be only a 



5 

struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, 
who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new 
arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable 
Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but 
a community of power; not organized riralries, but an 
organized common peace. 

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances 
on this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of 
nations now arrayed against one another have said, in 
terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no 
part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their 
antagonists. But the implications of these assurances 
may not be equally clear to all — may not be the same on 
both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if 
I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be. 

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without 
victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may 
be permitted to jDut my own interpretation upon it and 
that it may be understood that no other interpretation 
was m my thought. I am seeking only to face realities 
and to face them without soft concealments. Victory 
would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor s terms 
imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in 
humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and 
would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon 
whicli terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but 
only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals 
can last. Onb" a peace the very principle of which is 
equality and a common participation in a common 
benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling be- 
tween nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is 
the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of 
racial and national allegiance. 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be 
founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the 
guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply 
a difference between big nations and small, between those 
that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must 
be based upon the common strength, not upon the in- 
dividual strength, of the nations upon whose concert 
peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources 
there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equality 
not gained in the ordinarj^ peaceful and legitimate de- 
velopment of the peoples themselves. But no one asks 
or expects anything more than an equaUty of rights. 
Mankind is looldng now for freedom of life, not for 
equipoises of power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality 
of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or 
ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the 
principle that governments derive all their just powers 
from the consent of the governed, and that no right any- 
where exists to hand jjeoples about from sovereignty to 
sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for 
granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single 
example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that 
there should be a united, independent, and autonomous 



Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, 
of worship, and of industrial and social development 
should be guaranteed to all peoples who have Uved hith- 
erto under the power of governments devoted to a faith 
and purpose hostile to their own. 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an 
abstract poHtical principle M'hich has alwaj's been held 
very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty 
in America, but for the same reason that I have spoken 
of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly 
indispensable — because I wish frankly to uncover reali- 
ties. Any peace which does not recognize and accept this 
principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon 
the affections or the convictions of mankind. The fer- 
ment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and 
constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize. 
The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and 
there can be no stability where the will is in rebeUion, 
where there is not tranquilHty of spirit and a sense of jus- 
tice, of freedom, and of right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now 
struggling towards a fuU development of its resources and 
of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great 
highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the 
cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the 
neutraMzation of direct rights of way under the general 
guarantee which will assure the peace itseK. With a 
right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away 
from free access to the open paths of the world's com- 
merce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact 
be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of 
peace, equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat 
radical reconsideration of many of the rules of inter- 
national practice hitherto thought to be established may 
be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and 
common in practically all circumstances for the use of 
mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing 
and compelhng. There can be no trust or intimacy be- 
tween the peoples of the world without them. The free, 
constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essen- 
tial part of the process of peace and of development. It 
need not be difficult either to define or to secure the free- 
dom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely 
desire to come to an agreement concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of 
naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the 
world in keeping the seas at once free and safe, and the 
question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and 
perhaps more difficult question of the hmitation of armies 
and of all progranames of military preparation. Difficult 
and dehcate as these questions are, they must be faced 
with the utmost candour and decided in a spirit of real 
accommodation if peace is to come with heahng in its 
wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without 
concession and sacrffice. There can be no sense of safety 
and equality among the nations if great preponderating 



armaments are henceforth to coutiaue here and there to 
be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world 
must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accom- 
modate their poUcy to it as they have planned for war and 
made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The ques- 
tion of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most 
immediately and intensely practical question connected 
with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. 

I have spoken upon these great matters without 
reserve and with the utmost expUcitness because it has 
seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning 
desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and 
utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high author- 
ity amongst all the peoples of the world who is at hberty 
to speak and hold nothing back. I am speaking as an 
individual, and yet I am speaking also, of coui-se, as the 
responsible head of a great government, and I feel con- 
fident that I have said what the people of the United 
States would wish me to say. May I not add that I hope 
and believe that I am in effect speaking for hberaLs and 
friends of humanity in every nation and of everj- pro- 
gramme of liberty? I would fain beheve that I am 
speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who 
have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real 
hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have 
come aheady upon the persons and the homes they hold 
most dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the people and 
Government of the United States will join the other 
civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the per- 
manence of peace upon such terms as I have named I 
speak with the greater boldness and confidence because 
it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this 
promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as 
a nation, but a fulfillment, rather, of all that we have 
professed or striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should %vith 
one accord adopt the doctrine of President Momoe as the 
doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to 
extend its polity over any other nation or people, but 
that every people should be left free to determine its own 
polity, its own way of development, unhmdered, 
unthreatened, unafraid, the httle along with the great 
and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid 
entanghng alliances which would draw them into com- 
petitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and 
selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influ- 
ences intruded from without. There is no entangling 
alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in 
the same sense and with the same pxirpose all act in the 
common interest and are free to Uve their own hves under 
a common protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent of the 
governed; that freedom of the seas which in interna- 
tional conference after conference representatives of the 
United States have urged with the eloquence of those 



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who are the convinced disciples of Uberty; and that 
moderation of armaments which makes of armies and 
navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of 
aggression or of selfish violence. 

These are American principles, American policies. 
We could stand for no others. And they are also the 
principles and policies of forward looking men and women 
everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened 
community. They are the principles of mankind and 
must prevail. 



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